Iceland Day 8

Once…!

It was an earlier morning today but I was very happy to have selected a place that was only a few kilometers away from the meeting place for our ride into the interior today. Unfortunately It was blowing rain sideways and the clouds were laying low obscuring much of any view.

In my research, I had read that we could drive ourselves most of the way on a very rough road, park the car basically any place we wanted in the floodplain and hope the pedestrian bridge had been moved into place somewhere nearby then hike the rest of the way in to our accommodation. I briefly thought about this but then thought I would leave the driving to the professionals because there were some smaller rivers we needed to cross to get to the parking area. We weren’t able to drive all the way to the huts because there was a much larger river that can only be crossed in specialty vehicles, like the shuttles.

When we checked in at the shuttle facility, the lady was clearly missing information because she didn’t have a few of our reservations even though we all had confirmations. Typically they run the shuttle via a bus but today they were using suped-up vans with big ole fatty tires on them. No problem, I thought, they looked better equipped than the busses.

But then the one van was full and since she was not expecting the rest of us, she grabbed another guy and right in front of us asked, “Have you driven this route before?”

WHAT… Are you freaking kidding me?

I had just been talking with a father and son duo (the other people whose reservation she couldn’t find) about watching the river crossing on You Tube and all the busses and cars getting stuck in the water.

I quickly glanced at the guy and assumed he would answer something along the lines of yes, quite a few times.

His response?…”Once.”

I swung around and looked at Jenny in horror mouthing, “You have got to be fu@king kidding me!”

She, in all her eagerness for everything to be copacetic, tried to assure me it would be OK.

Meanwhile, the lady (who was clearly the superior), told him he’d be fine and, “To just follow me through the river crossings.” She then pointed to a radio that was mounted inside the truck and told him he could use that to talk to her if necessary… Oh boy, Oh boy!

Anybody who knows me knows that I take our physical safety very seriously. Anything we do that entails risk, outside of the risks of life in general, I have researched and calculated safety measures – hence why I was leaving the driving to professionals…

So in we climbed with Jenny and I taking the second row assuming the other two would take the first row but they climbed in the third row. I quickly climbed over Jenny and took the first row closest to the doors stating, “Well… I think it would be more prudent if there was somebody in the emergency exit row. I am more than willing and capable to assist in this position.”

I was a bit relieved to see they had a window break mounted on the door frame and assured the others that I would pass it back when I was done with it, if need be.

Holy Smokes…not the way to start the journey.

The driver, I asked his name but couldn’t come close to even catching it, was clearly very cautious, falling far behind the leader but I appreciated this far more than him being some Dakar Rally driver and racing through the rivers. The lead driver stopped when we got to the major river crossing and came back and told him to, “Follow me through exactly as I go because there is a large rock underwater that you need to miss.”

Oh Lordy…Lordy!

In we went and as the superior had said, he followed her exactly and missed the rock which we could see as we passed it because of the wake we created moved the water enough.

All in all, our driver did a great job. He said one thing to us and that was that he was “in training.” In the US, with all the regulations and oversight, I think having made a run once would not have qualified one as in training to shuttle passengers!

Approaching the hiking huts, the weather was not great, it was pretty much spitting with low clouds so we could see some of the area we were in and, similar to our time in Alaska, we yearned to see it all!

We decided to grab some lunch before heading out for a hike; it was a set choice but the lamb soup hit the spot.

Jenny and I spent some time studying the map to see which hike we wanted to take, especially considering the weather. Once we had settled on one that was said to be about 2 hours or so we headed out- straight uphill again.

We have since made another observation of Iceland – hiking here is kind of like trying to drive here – there are very few signs showing you where to go and no places to pull off to let a fellow hiker pass you without doing some sort of body rub because believe it or not, there were actually bushes lining the trail here.

I have never been so lost and confused trying to hike and follow both a printed map and an online maps program. The two of us were so frustrated with trail arrows painted with colors that were never even on the official map; arrows leading to a color that didn’t show it intersecting with the color we were on and trails that turned off with no markings at all. At one point we came across an older foreign gentleman, probably early 70s, that was clearly not equipped to be hiking (no pack, no water, no hiking shoes, no poles, no weather appropriate outerwear) literally on his ass trying to slide down a hill because he had mistaken the trail direction. I was able to grab his hand and guide him down the last section he was on but both Jenny and I were so sad thinking of how nervous he must have been, all by himself, on this seriously treacherous part of the mountainside.

Jenny and I continued to the hike and our clmb up, up, up and in doing so we lost all visualization of the valley below and began hiking into fog. We hit another crossroads and couldn’t figure out where we were so in the mind of safety, I decided it best we return the way we came and throw in the towel on hiking, but not before we took a turn and ended up scrambling up, over and in between boulders to check out a cave.

The rest of the afternoon, we chilled in the main camp building, played a few games of backgammon, battleship and cup pong (all via apps on our phones – Jenny beat me in all but pong). We waited around for dinner and then decided early to bed.

Our hope is tomorrow the weather will clear; the weather apps say it will. I really hope so because you can just make out that there is a lot of beauty surrounding us.